Late Night Talks

Sometimes, Julie just couldn't sleep. It had always happened to her, a couple nights a month. She wouldn't go far as to say that she had insomnia, but she was definitely no stranger to sleepless nights.

Before Tim lived with the Taylors, Julie usually spent these nights watching the living room TV with subtitles instead of sound, or reading in her bedroom.

But after Tim became a resident of the house, Julie's sleepless night plans changed. See, for now Julie had someone she could actually talk to when her mind refused to shut off.

She would pad across the house in these fuzzy socks she liked to wear to bed, making her footsteps pretty much silent. Tim didn't understand those damn fuzzy socks in the least bit—Dillon never truly got cold enough to warrant anything other than a medium-weight jacket. He didn't know how Julie could stand to wear the things.

But she did, and they helped her to make the journey from her room to Tim's so quietly that she never ran the risk of waking her parents or Gracie Bell.

These journeys were a regular enough occasion that Tim soon learned to leave his door slightly ajar, also in the pursuit of quietness. Julie would pull it open slowly, because the door to the garage-turned-Tim's-bedroom had a tendency to let out a high-pitched squeak if you opened it too quickly.

Julie never turned any lights on, so Tim never knew when she would appear in his room in the middle of the night until he felt her crawl into his bed and conform her body to his.

Since Tim usually slept facing the wall, Julie would wrap her arm around his waist and trail kisses around his back until he woke.

"What is it this time?" Tim would ask in a slurred whisper, sleep making his voice thick and clumsy. He would roll himself until he faced her.

"This is a serious question," Julie whispered back, "so don't laugh. Do you think, when you have a pet, they understand that you love them? Like really understand?"

"That's what's keeping you up at night, Jules? If Rex the dog has feelings?"

"No, but think about it," Julie would try to justify as Tim's mind fully surfaced from sleep. Typically, he would rub his eyes even though he knew it would be dark when he opened them. "You feed them and take care of them. Buy them medicine if they're sick. Groom their fur. But you don't speak the same language, so how do you really know?"

"All's I know is that you're somethin' else," Tim would murmur against her skin as he buried his face in the crook where her neck met her shoulder. When he was just waking up like this, his Texas drawl was thicker and his words slower than usual.

"Like, how is a goldfish ever supposed to know you care about it?" Julie continued to muse.

"Don't goldfish only pay attention for, like, three seconds?" Tim asked, stifling a yawn. "They can't even remember who you are, Jules."

"You can't pet a goldfish. Well, I guess you could, if you were really committed," Julie prattled on as if Tim hadn't spoken. "And it's not like you can play with a goldfish either. All you do is feed it."

"I dunno, I think most everything is pretty happy if it gets fed."

"But I don't mean just happy," Julie lamented. She ran her fingers through Tim's hair, which only served to draw him closer to going back to sleep. "I mean real love. I wonder if animals understand that."

There was a silence so long that Julie thought Tim had fallen back asleep. She was just about to untangle herself from his arms when he spoke again.

"I heard once that if you die and no one finds you for a while, your cat will eat your face."

"Timothy."

"Woman, stop calling me that."

"Timothy. That was terrible. Why would you say that?" She meant to sound like she was scolding him, but Tim could hear the held-back laughter in her voice.

"Cats'll eat your face. Doesn't sound like love to me. Can I go back to sleep now? You know your dad is making us have morning practice since they're doin' maintenance on the field after school."

"Fiiiiine," Julie drug the word out far longer than its four letters justified. "I'll see you in the morning then, grumpy."

She left him with a kiss on the lips before padding her way back across the house. Tim rolled back over, but in the dark there was a small smile playing at his lips.